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Windows Media Player

For some reason, when I start Windows Media Player (V10) the screen that should come up seems to just go off into cyberspace. It doesn't matter if I start it by inserting a CD, clicking on it in the Programs listing or just by clicking on the icon, it does the same thing. It appears on the task bar showing me that it has loaded, but nothing comes up on the screen. If I click to Maximize, the listing on the task bar seems to fly off to the upper right of my screen and still nothing comes up on the screen. I tried reloading it from both the original XP (Home Edition) CD and from the SP2 CD, but no results. I also tried to restore to an earlier restore point and it says nothing has changed and won't do anything. What should I do?

BC AdBot (Login to Remove)

I ran my Norton Antivirus and AdAware. No viruses detected and eliminated some data miner spyware. Otherwise appears to be clean. Rebooted, and WMP still not working. I wanted to uninstall and reinstall WMP but I ran into problems there. (Incidentally, I had tried just reinstalling over the existing software by downloading WMP 10 from the MS.com site, but that didn't change anything.) My first thought was to delete it in Control Panel>Install/Remove Programs, however, WMP wasn't listed there. I then deleted it from the Programs page (Start>Programs>...). I think all that did was remove a shortcut. Then I tried deleting the folder through Microsoft Explorer and I get a message telling me I can't delete this program because it is being used (when it actually was not - verified through Task Manager). So I tried just moving the folder to another "temporary" location, rebooted, and to my amazement, it had reappeared in the Programs folder again. (Now I have the folder in 2 places and it still doesn't work.) So I guess my next question has to be "How the heck do I uninstall this program?"

Thanks for the reply. I had tried that. Didn't work. Tried clicking in the little box to show updates. That made WMP 10 appear. When I tried to remove it, it said it rolled it back to the previous version. I don't think it did but it still didn't fix the problem. Yesterday, I tried getting rid of it in Safe Mode. I ran Norton and AdAware again and the system showed clean. Then I used the uninstall wizard in Norton CleanSweep to uninstall WMP 10 and it actually worked. When I reinstalled it, to my surprise, the main screen apppeared again just like old times. However, when I rebooted into normal mode, guess what. That's right, the same problem resurfaced and I was back to square one. I'm really getting frustrated with this. Oh, by the way, I don't know if it's related, but all the games that come with XP are gone. The Games folder is still there, but it's empty. I don't necessarily need the games, but I do need WMP 10 because I use it to make CD's for my church choir. I'm getting really tired of having to borrow someone else's computer to do my work. Do you think this problem might better be referred to the HiJack This group? Please help if you can.
Thanks for your attention.

Thanks for the reply. I have run AdAware several times and only detected data miners, which were subsequently eliminated, although they seem to reappear. I tried to load SpyBot but, after installing, when I try to run updates it won't update everything listed and so it won't run. I tried reinstalling several times, but always the same result. I have installed HiJack This now. My scan results are listed below.